Apologies to anyone who got the first copy of this. I don't know how the extra n got added when I hit reply. ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail.merit.edu.:

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RCPT To:<nanong@merit.edu> <<< 550 <nanong@merit.edu>... User unknown 550 <nanong@merit.edu>... User unknown

=============================================== Reposted due to error:

On Wed, Feb 03, 1999 at 01:35:44PM -0500, Bob Allisat wrote:

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Christopher Neill <chris@verio.net> writes: : : <http://www.qual.net/support/aup.html> : : Our customer, let's call them "X", agrees to our policy. Our : policy clearly states that their connection is at will, and : can be terminated or restricted at any time by us. : : So there you have it, CYA.

If every ISP has the same AUP then every citizen is forced under duress by a cartel of interests into violating their own human rights, freedom of expression and civil liberties. So fuck your Acceptable Policies! What we need is a Digital Bill of Rights <http://fcn.net> to over-ride these sinister commercial carte blanche policies and protect us from bastards like Mr. Neill.

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From the "Digital Bill of Rights": The right to uncensored, free, and uncontrolled communications to and from unmoderated, public areas.

Define "public", please.

Actually, even with the existing AUPs, that's still possible. Any two parties who wish to exchange anything may do so by establishing a tunnel. The AUPs are simply there to protect customers and ISPs from theft of services and theft of property among other harms. Spammers are thieves. They steal time and bandwidth on my network at my expense without my permission and against my express wishes. They don't compensate me and I don't want them on my network. Everyone who does compensate me has agreed that they don't want their stuff, too. As such, I don't see anyone's civil rights being violated, except mine. Owen ----- End Included Message -----